World O’ Hurt

An important week for me! Saturday is the Spartan 300 Challenge finale. I’ve made some huge leaps and hit many of the goals for which I was aiming. The 400lb deadlift felt really good to hit. Not only was it a 30lb PR, but it was a specific goal of mine for the 6-week period! I also wanted 30 consecutive pullups, and I did get 20 last week, so I do believe that with a concerted effort, I could get 30! We’ll see if I reached my <8% body fat goal (which isn’t incredibly important to me, just a “let’s see if I can do it” sort of thing) during the weigh ins and measurements.

This week I really have to keep the diet under control and get adequate sleep and rest/recovery. I am signed up for the Level 1 challenge on Saturday (10:30, if anyone wants to watch…). I did sub-15 minutes on the level 2 during the beginning of the challenge, so I just don’t have too much more to prove there. I am going to enter the level 1 challenge with a little trepidation. I feel that it’s MUCH more difficult than the level 2, and I am going to take JDP’s advice and pretend like I already have it. I can’t afford to second-guess myself!

Monday

Crossfit workout. Brutality defined and refined. Three rounds for time:

• 100ft Lunge with Kettlebell (24kg)
• 15 Burpees
• 25 Kettlebell swings (24kg)

I finished in 13:45 I believe, maybe a minute quicker. Better to assume slower than faster, and try harder next time! This was a brutal workout. Kettlebell swings leech the life and vitality from you like nothing else.

Tuesday

Spartan 300 Challenge Workout:

• 50 Squats 2 Pull-ups
• 40 Squats 4 Pull-ups
• 30 Squats 6 Pull-ups
• 20 Squats 8 Pull-ups
• 10 Squats 10 Pull-ups

More difficult than it looks but also quick. I finished in 6:35, with all pull-ups on rings. My time was too slow for my liking but I have an unfortunate penchant for not pushing myself as hard when I’m solo. I must overcome this. I wanted 5 minutes on this workout. I saw several areas for improvement. Over the 6 weeks after this challenge, I will be going through all the workouts again, to try and get more out of them than I did this time around. This was my first Crossfit challenge, so I’ll do better on my next one. Fight Gone Bad IV, anyone???

Wednesday

“Heavy, Running Grace”. This was a beastly workout. It was a “Heavy” (20lb extra on the bar) “Running” (phases punctuated by a 400m run) “Grace” (30 Squat Clean and Jerk) for time. This challenged both my metabolism and strength to the extreme. On a side note, we had the priviledge of having Crossfit Central Affiliate Team member Kris Kepler work out with us. It’s humbling seeing a master at work. He finished the workout 4.5 minutes faster and 40lbs heavier than I did. Pretty amazing stuff. Three Rounds for Time:

• 10 Squat Clean and Jerk @ 155lb (I did 115lb, a 20lb personal best on the movement. I am moving cautiously forward due to my shoulders)
• 400m Run

I finished in 15:43, completely exhausted.

There was an interesting question posed to the class over whether it is better to do a workout lighter and with perfect form, or heavier with compromised form. I responded on Central’s blog entry like this:

It seems to me that the optimal weight is just enough to finish the workout in time.

I think there was an article about scaling in Crossfit Journal a week or so ago. As it turns out, if you go with a lighter weight and complete the workout faster, your energy expenditure is actually more than if you had done full or RX weight and taken a longer time to finish the workout.

In terms of form vs. Weight, I consider proper form to be very important. If you constantly increase your weight without considering your form and technique, you are not only reinforcing bad habits, but as above, you might not even be getting as good a workout.

I think the correct answer is to increase weight just until the point your form begins to break down, then remove a little. At some point it becomes impossible to increase weight without compromising form and correctness. I don’t think that is a bad thing, but it should be an informed decision: “You have to know the rules well enough to break them”.

To elaborate on my thoughts there, I believe there is a point where adding more weight is a long-term detrement in exchange for short-term gains.  as we see in this Crossfit Journal article, it is often a faustian bargain to always go RX weight, as this can compromise both the safety and efficacy of a workout. There is no question that for those capable of getting the most out of an RX workout, those persons should do an RX workout, but for many, including myself, the greater gains are made from scaling down the weight and concentrating on form and maximal energy output per unit of time.

I believe that since my shoulder injury, I have been just a touch too conservative with the weight, but I am still new at this, and exploring my boundaries.

Thursday

I will let this workout speak for itself:

• 50 Chest-to-bar pull-ups
• 50 Burpees

Gross! This workout was a nightmare. I have been working on my pullups, but chest-to-bar is a whole other ballgame. I stalled out rather early, dissappointingly enough (much to my chagrin, I was the last off of the pull-up bar), but I made up a lot of time on the burpees, finishing a close second or third with 10:10 RX. For a comparison, this was a workout at the “Hell’s Half Acre” qualifiers, and I believe that the best time was a stunning 3.5 or so minutes. Amazing.

This workout examplified some of the great things about CrossFit for me, it scales to fit all fitness levels, and there’s always room for improvement. In my case, 7 minutes worth, and that’s just for this workout.

Friday

I sat out this conditioning class workout, since I wanted a rest day before the Spartan 300 Challenge workout on Saturday. I’m pretty proud of this workout, and I think it’s very representative of what kung-fu conditioning workouts should be. It’s very metabolic but has a good strength component, and was easily scaled for different skill/conditioning levels. The after workout was one of my favorite stand-bys. The strategy was to exhaust the core during the main workout, and then finish the job after a little rest.

AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• 10 Knees-to-Elbows
• 15 Push-ups
• 20 Lunges

I gave the option of stationary or walking lunges. I was pleased to note everyone mixed it up, and received the feedback that the walking ones were easier on peoples’ knees. Interesting.

After workout. Three Rounds:

• 1 minute front plank (on elbows)
• 1 minute front plank (high push-up position)
• 1 minute side plank (each side)
• 1 minute max reps sit-ups

This is an instant classic. I will have to tell my Crossfit coach about it . It does take more time than we usually have for Crossfit after workouts, but might be idea for a shorter WOD day.

A good day today, surprisingly. I was less than kind to my body, diet-wise this weekend. I hope that this week’s workouts go a long way towards burning off the whole carton of Ben and Jerry’s “Chubby Hubby” that I devoured on Saturday. I think the reason I’m not up on my food log right now is that my weekends are just garbage, health-wise. I don’t want to be completely ascetic, but I think I’m stretching the concept of a “cheat day” a little too far!

Since I’m in the Spartan 300 Challenge, I’m going to try and wrap it up with exceptionally good eating for the remainder of the time. I want to produce a food log I can be proud of!

I have said it before, but because I love food so much, I always feel compelled to test the hypothesis on my cheat days: I just don’t enjoy rich, filling restaurant food much anymore. It tastes good going down, but immediately upon hitting my stomach, the joy is drained from me as the food sits in my belly like a lead brick.

In contrast, eating paleo generally leaves me energetic and ready for more challenges, even when I eat my fill.

Monday

GREAT workout. I felt teriffic all the way through and finished as strong as I started. I did use 24kg kettlebells for the Farmer’s Walk, but it was honestly because I thought they were heavier than 55lb dumbbells I was off by a few pounds per hand. Right now I’m telling myself that the kettlebells are are harder to hold on to due to the much thicker, untextured handles, so I’m gonna say it’s a wash… Five rounds for time:

• 10 Knees-to-Elbows
• 30 Walking Lunges
• 30 Sit-Ups (butterfly-style, on the AbMat for extra “ouch”)
• 100m Farmer Walk (RX 55lb Dumbbell. As I said above, I used 24kg Kettlebells)

I finished this in 17:45 or so, the fastest time that day up until my class. I was really quite happy with my performance. I believe I only dropped from the bar on the K2E’s once or at most, twice, and I did not drop the kettlebells on the farmer walk at all (which would have incurred a 5 burpee penalty, on molten-lava-hot pavement).

I think I’ve finally hit a stride again.

Tuesday

Spartan 300 Challenge Workout. Four Rounds for Time:

• 50 Double-Unders
• 25 Push-Ups

My time: 7:45. I think I did 10 extra push-ups somewhere along the line, but lost count and figured better a few too many than a few too few. This workout was tailored for me. I take pride in my Double-Unders.

Wednesday

A real horrible sufferfest at Crossfit for me. A combination of my three worst excercises and not feeling 100% in the first place! The good news is that I turned in a performance that was good enough to surprise me (in a pleasant way!). After several months of Crossfit, I think I’ve come to the unpleasant realization that even physically, as in so many things in life in which I have accomplished less, I just don’t push myself to my limits. I gemerally go away from a Crossfit workout thinking “I did OK, even a little better than last time, but I could have done better”.

Perhaps that’s the power of Crossfit. Crossfit doesn’t  promulgate a “I’m OK, you’re OK just how you are” ethic, where clients can build their own mental and emotional fortress, and feel safe and sound, sequestered away from any thought that they are anything but already as good as they ever will be.

Crossfit will strip away from you any delusions of adequacy or competence, or any cloak of illusion you have drawn around yourself that you are “fit”. The WODs will break you down into your component parts. The reassembly and what comes after that is up to you. It is an important decision.

Three Rounds for Time:

• 500m Row (I believe my splits were under 2 minutes, with the exception of the third, which was slightly over)
• 21 Overhead Squats (RX 95lb, I did 65lb, which felt right to me as my shoulder asymptotically nears wellness again)
• 15 Pull-ups

My time: 18:54. These were three of my worst movements.

Thursday

A good one: Crossfit Benchmark “Nicole”. AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• 400m Run
• Max pull-ups without dropping from the bar

This is a toughie. The more you drop from the bar, the more you run. I tried pretty hard on this one, shattering my previous consecutive pull-up record (29 from 10, on the first round). I managed a total of 6 runs and 74 pull-ups in 5 sets, distributed as follows:

20-12-15-15-12

Friday

I took a page from the Thursday Crossfit workout. AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• 50 Double-Unders
• Max Reps Ring Rows

I got 11 rounds and 93 ring rows. Not bad! 550 double unders is a good haul!

A few notes:

• The shoulder is starting to bug me again, just a little. I am going to back off a little. I keep forgetting to progress slowly
• I’m going to start trying to zone my meals, or at least get them zone-ish!
• I’m fixing to start to make good things happen!
• I’m trying to integrate my martial arts and Crossfit training together such that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts
• My intention is to start doing Triggerpoint and AIS more often, if not every day. The recovery is as important as the activity (if not more so!)

Monday

Crossfit Workout. It was like visiting an old friend! This was my very first Crossfit workout ever, as chronicled here. I noticed that I did not log my initial time in that post, but I happen to remember it: 18:40 or so. It was seared into my brain because of the panic of never having worked out so hard in my life! Things have changed since then:

• I’m four minutes faster
• No medicine balls for height. This means I’m getting lower on all my squats (even from the beginning, the medball being under my ass limited my depth instead of showed me how far down to go)

The workout. Four Rounds For Time:

• 400m Run
• 50 Squats

My time: 14:57. As I noted above, this cuts my time by 20% compared to my first attempt. Now that’s progress. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE:

• 50 Toe-To-Bar

I completed 25, but I was as strict as I could be given my legs were jelly (I tried to maintain straight legs throughout, etc). The time limit was 5 minutes.

• Tabata pushup/plank. Ouch.

A great workout day!

Tuesday

This is the one of the days when I perform the Spartan 300 Challenge workouts. Never one to suffer alone, I do these at my Kung-Fu school and rope my fellow black belts Elliot and Tommy into doing them with me. I’m sill not sure how many of them to do a week, but I’m currently doing two of the four, with plans to move to three (shoulder allowing).

The workout. Five Rounds For Time:

• 12 Pull-Ups
• 18 Sit-Ups
• 24 Walking Lunges

I made some modifications to the workout:

• I use rings for the pull-ups
• I use an Ab-Mat for the sit-ups
• I did regular, not walking lunges (the space is small)

Hopefully the increased difficulty of the rings and ab-mat made up for watering down the lunges somewhat. I did manage two of the five sets with no jumping pull-ups, and then did as many as I could without resorting to jumping. I did well, but as I noted, my shoulder is feeling it. My time was 9:51. Elliot beat me with a gutsy performace on the rings with a time of 9:23. He DOES weigh 50lb lighter than I do!

Wednesday

Crossfit Workout. I really loved this workout. I think Push-jerks are quickly becoming my favorite lift right behind deadlifts! Five Rounds For Time:

• 7 Hang Power Cleans @ 135lb (I used 75lb)
• 7 Push-Press with the same load
• 400m run

This was a really great workout. As my shoulder is only on it’s road to recovery and not already there (as I have to keep constantly reminding myself), I lowered the weight significantly. I decided to make hay out of this situation by resolving to do each rep with perfect form, high intensity, and without dropping the bar. I accomplished this goal.

I will continue to go up in weight very gradually; I see no reason to be in a rush at all. I want to eventually coach this stuff, and to do that, I have to be healthy, and I have to have the ability to do everything well.

My time was 15:16.

Thursday

Crossfit Workout. This one actually looked fairly simple on paper, but it was far harder than Wednesday’s WOD, in my opinion. Ten Rounds For Time:

• 100m Run
• 10 Knees-To-Elbows
• 5 In-n-Outs

This was a beyotch, for sure. I rattled off 3-4 rounds fairly easily, and was a round and a half ahead of the rest of the field. I quickly gassed after that, but managed to pull through before the cut-off with a time of 19:13. I feel I could have done this more quickly.

Friday

Crossfit Spartan 300 Challenge Workout. Three rounds for time:

• 10 45lb Dumbbell Thruster
• 10 Burpees

A bitch. I did one set with 45lbs and then lowered it to 40lb apiece. Thank god for adjustable dumbbells! In retrospect, I probably could have finished it out with 45. My time was 7:39 but that includes 2-3 seconds to grab the weights after I hit start on the stopwatch, as well as the time it took to lower the weights to 40lb. I will follow JDPs advice and commit to a weight next time.

Kung-Fu Conditioning. We further explore the possibilities of the rings. AMRAP 20 Minutes:

• 10 Knees-to-Elbows -OR- Toes-to-Hands
• 30 Sit-ups
• 10 Knees-to-Elbows -OR- Toes-to-Hands
• 60 Bicycles
• 25 Double Unders

I did a few rounds but did not keep track. I am having too much fun motivating my students and correcting their form! We also did a short bag workout, and finished with ie-chin-ching #13. Yum!

I always use any excuse available to me, no matter how tenuous its grasp on relevance, to make my Friday Kung-Fu conditioning class difficult in an oh-so-special way (ask anyone about my completely fabricated “be kind to animals week). Imagine my joy then, when I realized that class day fell on Friday the Thirteenth, a day with a  long history of bullshit superstition attached to it! It’s not too much of a conceptual leap to suppose that any class on a Friday the Thirteenth would be difficult:

For Time:

• 13 Rounds:
  • 13 Yard Duck Walk
  • 13 Lunges
  • 13 Mountain Climbers
  • 13 Yard Bear Crawl
  • 13 Pushups
• 13 Burpees to finish out.

My Time: 17:23

This was a very difficult workout, and very metabolically challenging. I arranged the exercises to have as little bodily position change from one to the next (pushup to duck walk is just pulling in one’s knees after the final pushup. Bear Crawl to pushup is just kicking back one’s feet). I didn’t expect this to be quite as difficult as it was. Thanks to the always like-minded Sergei for the duck-walk idea.

The great thing was this workout was very very exhausting; we certainly did not have the energy for a good Tabata, so instead we finished out with good ol’ ie chin ching #9.

I am currently working on compiling a small list of “standard” benchmark workouts to rotate through monthy as a consistent marker of improvement and betterment. I believe that the four-round “Twilight of the Legs” is a good one, and I am trying to think up a suitable “Shaolin 300″ as well (although we already did a very very difficult one with more reps). Something with Shaolin skills such as kicking will likely make it in as well.

The sky’s the limit!

No Crossfit today due to an Affiliate meeting. Since there is a make-up day next week, this means I can look forward to Crossfit Monday through Thursday!

A quick n’ dirty workout, stolen from my pal Eric. Three rounds for time:

• 20x Renegade Row (20lb DBs)
• 50 Situps
• 50 Lunges

My time: 12:04, with My pal Tommy E. pulling in right behind me at 14:20.

Kung-Fu katas are quite dynamic, and exercise rapid bodily position changing, especially when done with deep stances and committed movements. When paired with a strength/metcon program such as Crossfit, it results in a perfect combination.

I teach a conditioning class on Fridays at my Kung-Fu school. It has a reputation for being very difficult and for “edge-seeking” students. I do nothing to dissuade people of that notion! I suppose that I take a certain perverse pride in teaching the class that is apparently talked about in hushed whispers. I also believe that there is tremendous value in a class such as mine. People know they will be pushed to their limit, and I think they value such an outlet.

Tonight, I tried to give my own twist to one of my favorite conditioning sets, that I borrowed from the amazing Mountain Athlete gym. It’s a little ditty I like to call “The Leg Destroyer”, that I put a few special twists on this time:

• As Many Rounds As Possible – 20 minutes:
  • 20 Air Squats
  • 20 Lunges (10 each leg)
  • 20 Jumping Lunges (10 each leg)
  • 10 Jump Squats
  • 20 Double-Unders (or 40 rope turns if double-unders aren’t gonna happen)

This is without a doubt one of the most brutal sets I’ve ever inflicted on the class. Generally, the Leg Destroyer is four rounds. Making it AMRAP was quite the eye opener. As I’m now keeping track of the performance of the students, some interesting trends surfaced. It seems that most people plateaued at five rounds. There were a few at six and some change, and a few at four and some change, but the overwhelming majority of people got in five rounds and a few squats.

This setup really becomes a grind after the first round. I would say that most people knocked out the first two sets fairly quickly, then spent 15 minutes on their next two or three! The decline in performance is pretty startling, which makes it all the more important to keep doing the exercises as quickly as you can!

One thing that I really tried to accentuate today was correct form on the squats and lunges. I was incredibly pleased to note that people still got in a large number of rounds even with that added difficulty. For me, the only conclusion I can reach is that people are a hell of a lot tougher than they think they are. As difficult as my class is, I will occasionally throw in a set like this one, and to a man (or woman!) the students invariable rise to  the occasion. I love and am proud of them all!

Since we still had some time left after the “Leg Destroyer”, I decided to throw in a little something extra that I discovered at the Crossfit gym the previous day:

• 16 Tabata Rounds, Alternating:
  • Situps
  • Bicycles

I have done Tabata circuits innumerable times in class, with multiple exercises (sometimes six or seven). The character of the alternating exercise protocol really seemed to be quite different than those setups. I felt there was more intensity and more at stake as the rounds went on. It’s not something we’ll do every week, but it is a wonderful variation.

Bravo to my students for tackling what is absolutely the hardest task I’ve given them to date!

Ah yes, dinner. I cooked up the last Ribeye steak with some salt and plenty of fresh-cracked pepper. Add in some crispy, verdant salad greens, and you have a paleolithic delight!